Release That Witch

Chapter 125: The Municipal Construction of Border Town

quot;Where’s the person who sent it? Any classification statistics?” Roland asked.

“Yes, please refer to the bottom,” Barov pointed to the bottom of the scroll and said. “A total of 1,100 have been sent to Border Town. They are mainly farmers and they were placed outside of the town as per your request. 35 of them were craftsmen that were placed under Karl’s command. Their residences have been prepared in the New Civilization District.” Barov clumsily pronounced the name. “However, is this okay, Your Highness? I remembered you were initially preparing it for the witches.”

“The guards whom I sent to spread the rumors haven’t returned yet, and the progress has been slower than I thought. Just let the craftsmen and their families have the houses, and we can always build more.” The entire Border Town would need to eventually be refurbished in Roland’s plan. The cottages built with the wood and mud shall be replaced with brick houses and they shall leave room for a spacious street at the same time, unlike the current alley which only allowed two people to pass side by side.

“Yes,” Barov nodded and said, “Your Highness, I heard that there would also be cattle and sheep being delivered?”

“Yeah, but not now, I specially asked them to deliver them a few days later along with the shepherds. There’s a grassland between the Misty Forest and the Impassable Mountain Range west of the city wall, it should be good for pasture. We need to blow out two openings in the city wall for the people to pass first. After all, it’ll only be used during the Months of Demons.”

Now that Roland had both men and wealth, the development limitations of Border Town had temporarily disappeared. Roland could finally put the town to good use.

He asked the bodyguard outside the door to come in and ordered, “Go and get Karl from the Administrative Office, I guess you’ll find him in the wooden shed area outside of town if he isn’t in the mine.”

After an hour, Karl walked into the office, bowed and said, “Your Highness.”

It had been half a year since he met the member of the Mason Guild, and he could be considered as the busiest officer since he was hired to work in the City Hall of Border Town managing the repair of the city wall, model houses, and those of the wooden shed temporary residential area. He was currently 35 years old with several white hairs showing on both of his sideburns, his skin was slightly tanned but he looked a lot more energetic than when they first met.

It was true that the environment could quickly change a person. Six months ago he was a Mason Guild refugee who was carefully concealing his identity. Now he was an experienced project commander and managed the engineering projects all by himself. Now he possessed the stature and gestures of a superior. However, what Roland most admired was his willingness to give.

Roland smiled and nodded. “Come and sit by the table.” He handed the sketches he had just drawn to Karl and said, “Take a look. I’ll need you to build these new things.”

“This is the warehouse. Uh, the bottom part of it is built-on stilts. That could effectively prevent moisture issues.” Karl quickly finished scanning through the first sketch before he flipped to the second sketch and observed for quite a good while before asking. “This is… a stove?”

“Indeed, you’ll need to build more than five furnaces on the border of North Slope Mountain to incinerate the cement and burn the clay bricks. We’ll need an open space, and considering the transportation channels and the yard position, more furnaces will be needed after it has been expanding to a larger scale.”

“Yes.” He turned to the last page of the sketch and frowned. “This… looks like a drain? No, it has a roof and parapet on top… It looks like it has a pond behind it. Your Highness, I don’t understand.”

Roland smiled. “It’s a lavatory and it’ll be your highest priority.”

“Lavatory?” Karl contemplated for a while and said, “Your Highness, where are you planning to build it? There are commodes in your castle, and the attendant would handle them regularly. As for the villagers, they normally wouldn’t need this kind of thing, they would resolve directly outside of their houses. So do the farmers, they just need to release themselves into Redwater River and the river would take the filth away.”

Thus, he could smell the strong stinky smell when he came ashore today. Roland shook his head, intending to disperse the unpleasant memory. “Exactly, we need to change that bad habit.”

“Uh… Bad habit?” Karl did not seem to quite understand.

“It’s of course hard to understand for the people who’re accustomed to defecating anywhere. How beautiful the world would be if a casual stroll wouldn’t risk stepping on stools.” Roland silently criticized in his heart. “Anyway, you just need to build it according to the sketch, and I’ve roughly marked the measurements. It should be located around the wooden shed area. There should be at least four to be built, and they should be built side by side on a two-by-two basis. Other than the ditch in the middle, it’s to be built with bricks, the sheds, roofs, and partitions outside should be built with wood as it would save a lot of cement.”

“Your Highness, you’re trying to gather them together to… that,” Karl paused as he obviously felt that he was degrading the dignity of the royal family by discussing such a filthy subject in front of His Highness. “What if they don’t go in?”

“I’ll issue an order for them to follow. You can go ahead and organize staff for the implementation.”

“In that case, I’ll follow your order,” he nodded and said, “Your Highness, I have one more thing to report to you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Since the Mason Guild was forced to dissolve, there were a lot of people, just like me, that chose to leave the king’s city. I’m thinking of writing a few letters inviting the members of the Mason Guild of whom I know to Border Town. They all have their strength, such as Lesya who’s very good at the furnaces you mentioned. Your Highness, I’m not sure…”

“There’s no problem at all,” Roland quickly said, “and you invite all of them here and rebuild the Mason Guild. The pay shall be calculated according to what was paid at the Mason Guild, and the experienced ones can be inducted into City Hall.”

“Thank you for your generosity.” Karl bowed with gratitude.

After the mason left, he started to compose the serfs management and title removal system.

The population of Border Town would soon reach a peak. If the town continued to depend on food importation, the town would be in danger if there was any sort of disaster or if they were cut off from business. Therefore, other than the industrial sector, the agriculture sector would need to be quickly developed as well in order to achieve food self-sufficiency as soon as possible.

Prince Roland believed that as long as there was a promotion, the serfs would soon transform into active farmers. In addition to the improved seeds by Leaf, the farmland beside Redwater River would soon turn into an ocean of golden wheat in summer.

Regarding his request to prioritize the lavatory construction, that was to prepare for the agriculture development coordination. After having the men, land, and seeds, all that was needed was the fertilizers.

Of course, Roland knew that using the fertilizer of humans and animals was very troublesome. It required regular cleaning of the storage pool and needed manual composting which was not as convenient as a chemical fertilizer. However, he did not have a clue how to make chemical fertilizer and so he could only substitute it with the natural organic fertilizer. At least the human and animal fertilizer was tested over a long period of time, and the traditional fertilization could still be seen in some rural areas in the twentieth century.

The people of this world knew very little about fertilizer, and most of them thought that feces was something filthy, other than being used to disgust others, there was no actual use of it.

Chapter 126: The Transformation of Wheat

he rotation system was not important for villages or towns with small population density, but the land around the big cities was scarce, and it was equal to wasting the land if the system was still adopted. There was a large amount of grain imported from other towns monthly for places like Silver City, Fallen Dragon Ridge and King’s City.

The first step to use the human and animals fertilizer was to collect them up. This was the reason why Roland decided to build the public lavatory as soon as possible, and it would also help to reduce the spread of diseases and beautify the living environment. What a multi-purpose solution. The lavatories had been almost completed by the time the rest personnel arrived. As for composting and sowing, he decided to pick up a few of experienced farmers and teach them one-on-one. After all, the land was still under the clean-up stage, so it would still need another week before they could start farming.

Having completed the chores on hand, he decided to take a look at Leaf’s experimental field in the castle backyard.

Since Leaf started to study and improve the various kind of seeds, all the planting areas in the backyard were planted with crops. She also followed Roland’s suggestion to divide the flower pond into several sections and number them in order to compare the development of the two groups of experimental crops.

The moment Roland stepped into the backyard, his eyes were dazzled by the clusters of shaking golden wheat.

“Your Highness.” Leaf who was squatting by the flower pond, stood, gathered up her hair by her ear and bowed to pay her respects.

“Are these all of your improved results?” He waved his hand to tell her not to be so courteous, walked forward excitedly to hold a heavy load of wheat and feel its full caryopsis with his fingers.

He had no idea of what the wheat would grow into, however, compared with the wheat fields of King’s City in his memory, the wheat was not only smaller than that on his palm but the particles were not so full.

Leaf nodded and said, “First, I let the wheat grow big and then I plant the new seeds into the flower pond. After accelerating and harvesting the seeds a few times, such a wheat can be obtained. However… I’m not sure why it’s difficult to get such a long and huge wheat again after repeating the process two to three times.”

“Unfortunately, I am not able to help on this aspect,” Roland thought. According to his poor junior high school biology knowledge, it was probably due to selfing defect? The rice planted normally in the southern area was far different from the wheat. In order to increase the productivity, the seeds were actually purchased. However, it already had reached its practical value if it could sustain for two generations. A wheat could produce over 130 seeds and the first batch of seeds was transformed by Leaf, the second batch of seeds was given to farmers as self-reserved seeds which could be used for at least two years.

“What about this one, how come it’s empty?” Roland noticed an area of the flower bed with only a few wilted wheat.”

“I was planting there at first, and perhaps I’ve been planted too many times on it,” Leaf spoke with uncertainty, “The wheat can quickly grow if I cast magic power, but the wheat will quickly wilt once the magic power has subsided.”

It seemed that in order for the magically transformed plant to continue growing, it would still need the nutrients of the soil and some trace of elements were still essential. Roland walked towards the last flower bed where the shape of the wheat planted was extremely strange. There were several clusters of cyan wheat grains hanging down from a stalk which was as thick as an arm, and there were several branches stretching out in the middle of the stalk. The branches were covered with green leaves. Therefore, the size of each wheat was much bigger and there were only two planted in the flower bed.

This was the revised version Roland got Leaf to produce with magic power—the Little Wheat Tree.

Roland had an idea to grow wheat like a banana tree, fruiting from the branches, harvesting annually to cut down on the troubles of ploughing and seeding and also yielding the bigger and more green leaves which could improve the photosynthesis and be less dependent on the land. The sturdy wheat-straw and branches were a little space-consuming as of now. Besides that, the wheat was only growing out from the top of the branches and did not match his initial idea. “Perhaps, get Leaf to improve it towards the direction of the grapevine?” Roland thought, “After all, she hasn’t seen a banana tree before and grape isn’t a rare product in the Kingdom of Graycastle, and it should be easier for her to imitate with an available sample.”

“The seeds of the three wheat can’t be used for sowing,” Leaf said, “I’ve tried, but the seeds didn’t sprout after they were planted. However, it does yield fruits repeatedly and the wheat you’re looking at now belongs to the second batch.”

“Not sprouting means that each of the wheat trees was a unique presence which required Leaf to manually transform and that it wasn’t worth growing at the present.” “You’ve done a good job. Let’s name the wheat Golden Ones. I’ll keep a test field for you in the south bank of Redwater River, surrounded by a fence and covered up by a partition. You can accelerate the ripening process of a batch of Golden Number One as soon as possible for this year’s spring sowing.” Roland ordered, “As for the garden, it’ll continue to be used to improve the new species, and I’ve just come up with a lot of ideas, not only for wheat crops but also for grapes.”

Unfortunately, Leaf could only understand the characteristics of a crop from the macro level, such as a lot of fruit, sweet taste, dense branches and so on… If she could understand a crop from the micro level, would she be able to directly manipulate its gene and carry out the fine and precise adjustment? For example, plants could absorb light other than the visible light, such as ultraviolet, X-ray, and even ionizing radiation for photosynthesis to directly produce starch, glucose, sucrose and other energy storage materials. In that case, people could directly plant the crops in the cultivating tank.

Prince Roland lit a bonfire beside Redwater River in the evening and ordered Carter and the guards to gather the serfs. Big pots were delivered here by his people and set up on simple clay stoves to cook porridge.

Staring at their new lord who had his back facing the fire, his narrow long shadow reflected by the fire, the serfs bowed their heads down scarily. There were some bold ones sneakily peeking at Prince Roland from time to time.

Roland stood before the bonfire and the crowd of more than 1,000 people, to announce the rules he had set.

“I’m Roland Wimbledon, the fourth Prince of the Kingdom of Graycastle, the Lord of Border Town and the Lord of the Western Region!”

“I’m gathering all of you here to tell you that you’re lucky to come to this domain! As long as you work hard, you can get rid of your present identity and status!”

“Yes, I’ll give you a chance to get rid of the identity of a slave and become a free man!”

The serfs suddenly burst into an uproar. The serfs were well aware of what being a free man meant. They would no longer be subject to cruelty by the owner and no longer had to be forced to carry out endless farming. All the crops produced in the fields would no longer have to be turned over to the lord, and their sons and daughters could also leave the identity of slaves behind them.

Roland waited for a moment and continued to say, “From tomorrow onwards, each of you’ll be assigned to a piece of land where someone will guide you on how to farm to cultivate more wheat. In the first year, you would have to turn over 70% of your harvest and you get to keep the rest. The serfs of the best harvest will be promoted to become free men!”

“After you become a free man, your family can be exempted from slavery, and you can decide whether to continue farming or find another way to sustain your lives in the town. If you choose to continue farming, 20% of your harvest should be turned over to pay the rent of the farmland. The other 80% would be at your disposal. If you choose to find another way to sustain your life, you would have to return the field to the lord, and, of course, there’s also no need to turn over any food!”

All that could be heard was the sound of breathing until someone suddenly shouted, “Your Highness, is what you said true?”

“Of course,” said Roland word by word, “As a lord, I would never deceive my people.”

“Your Merciful Highness,” someone could not help but shout gently and soon there was cheering which quickly became louder. “Long live, Your Highness!”

A serf in the first row started to kneel down in front of the cheering crowd, following by the second and the third…

Suddenly, all of the serfs were kneeling, the cheering sounds continually growing. The voice of the people finally combined into one rhythm. “Your Merciful Highness!” “Long Live, Your Highness!”

“Since there was an echo, there was no need to prepare an actor,” Prince Roland thought.

He clapped his hands and ordered the guards behind him, “Let’s eat!”

Chapter 127: Wendy

ightingale came out of the Mist once Roland fell asleep. She gently helped him to tidy up the blanket and covered his exposed arm. She stood quietly watching him for a moment. Then she left through the floor silently to go back to her room.

“Haven’t you slept yet?” Nightingale was slightly surprised to see Wendy still reading at the bedside.

“I’m afraid that what you’re doing is wrong!” Wendy stared at her. “His Highness isn’t a child. Is it necessary to take care of him until he falls asleep?”

“His Highness sent people to the other cities and towns to spread news of the witch organization. I’m just being cautious in case the witches intentionally come to hurt His Highness after hearing the news.” Nightingale picked up a wet towel and wiped her face, before untying her red belt and leather wrist guard. Then she unbuckled her armor. This outfit was newly made by His Highness. The ivory hooded-jacket design was extremely obvious, but yet Roland thought it was very suitable for an assassin.

Nightingale carefully hung the clothes up and smoothed out every wrinkle. Her perfectly fit body was wrapped within a piece of fine gauze, and there was no fat to be found on her tight abdomen, and thighs.

“What kind of accident would there be.” Wendy put down her book. “We have our sisters living in the castle and there are the guards patrolling outside the castle. Besides, haven’t you put the stone under his pillow? You’ve never touched something like that before.”

“Well, I’m just doing it to ensure his safety.” She sat by the side of the bed, took off her long boots, pulled her slender legs up and turned herself over beside Wendy.

“Did you even hear what I said last time?” Wendy sighed. “Veronica, we’re witches.”

“I know, Wendy,” Nightingale nodded and said, “We’re ‘witches'”.

[Prince Roland would marry a witch. He had said it himself, and he had not been lying.]

Of course, Nightingale should not disseminate this information unless it was necessary. She silently apologized to Wendy and changed the topic. “Do you have any information about the church?”

“Why do you ask this now?” Wendy was shocked.

“When Roland was in the castle of Longsong Stronghold, the high priest of the church came to visit him and expressed his willingness to support him to seize the throne.”

“What did he say?” Wendy sounded nervous. “Or did Roland ask you to go out before the conversation?”

Nightingale shook her head with a smile and said softly, “He just asked me to pay attention to avoiding the range of God’s Stone of Retaliation. His Highness didn’t wear it himself. Wendy, he didn’t agree to the invitation from the church. He refused them.”

Wendy was relieved, and yet seemed a little disconsolate. “Unfortunately, the amount of help we can provide to His Highness is very limited, unlike the church which has power covering the entire mainland. If he agreed with them, he could probably take over the throne more quickly…”

“Who knows. He said that the high priest was full of nonsense and not trustworthy at all.” She paused. “The only concern I have is this.” Nightingale narrated the incident of the red and black pills. “In the Mist, the pill has the same color as the stone, which is incredible. Our sisters have seen the result of swallowing the stone, which is no different from committing suicide. The high priest mentioned it was a kind of medicine they’re studying in the praying room of Holy City. Did you ever hear of it in the cloister?”

When the Witch Cooperation Association left Silver City, Cara brought Nightingale, Windseeker and Stone to set traps to capture villains who were chasing them for bounty and had retaliated. One of the ways was to put the God’s Stone of Retaliation they were wearing into their mouth and make them swallow it. The villains who swallowed the God’s Stone of Retaliation would die quickly, and their entire body curled up as if shrunken, just like fish dried under the hot sun.

“I have no idea,” Wendy closed her eyes and said slowly, “As far back as I can remember, I was living in the cloister in the old Holy City. It was surrounded by high walls, and there were no other sights except the sky. All activities were within the courtyard, reading and interpreting drawings were both taught by the chief nun. I still remember her name, Faria. One of the books she read to us was an introduction to the old Holy City. There were churches, cloisters, libraries, memorial halls and heroic walls in the city, but there was never a place called the praying room. I lived in the cloister for more than 10 years before the accident happened…”

Nightingale had heard Wendy mention it before. The cloister had been attacked by a witch, and many people died in the accident. Wendy had escaped from the cloister during the chaos. “We’re not sure which witch had such courage to challenge the church alone, but she saved you at least.”

“No, Veronica. The witch came from the church,” Wendy shook her head and said, “She was just like me, a member of the cloister.”

“What do you mean?”

“The girls who lived in the cloister could basically be divided into three categories. The first was like me, they grew up there and knew nothing about their origins. The second was the waifs or orphans who were sent by the churches after being adopted. And the final was the girls who were sold by their parents to the church. The managers would separate them according to their age and place them in different dormitories, and their learning content was also different. The youngest would learn how to read, 10 to 14 years old would go for caroling and the girls older than 14 would learn etiquette. The nuns called our class the literacy class, and the older ones’ the choirs and ritual classes. Once a lady becomes an adult, she was sent away from the cloister.”

It was the first time Nightingale had heard this. Wendy had never discussed her experience in the cloister in detail.

“In the first few years, we could always hear the girls screaming at night, mostly the ones from the choir and ritual classes, I didn’t quite understand what was happening. Until I was in the choir class, then I noticed that there would be lords from the church patronizing the dorm in the evening. They would drag several girls from the bed away with them and only send them back in the morning. Sometimes, they were not all sent back.”

Nightingale clenched her jaw. She was certain that she knew exactly what Wendy’s words meant.

“Such incident would happen once or twice a month. It became more frequent, almost once every two days. I was selected after that. Faria pulled me out of the room and whispered in my ear saying, “Just bear with it.” I was dragged to a half-covered underground house in a corner of the garden. The house was ablaze with lights, and there was a girl from the ritual class cuffed to the wall and four or five people around…” Wendy’s voice was slightly jittery. “When they approached me, the girl suddenly broke the shackles and grabbed the nearest one by his neck. She snapped his head off like a chicken.”

“She awakened?”

“I don’t know,” said Wendy. “Though they had taken off their clothes, they still wore God’s Stone of Retaliation. She killed them one by one, and one of them had his limbs torn off. Before his death, he seemed to say ‘extraordinary’. Adult screams alerted the guards outside the house. They opened the iron gate and rushed into the room, but they were bewildered. The girl charged straight into them. ”

“Extraordinary… does it mean witch?” Nightingale asked, “Even the guard couldn’t fight against her?”

“The difference was too big. I learned afterwards that the guards were actually from the Judgement Army. One of them blew his whistle and the other attacked with his swords. By the time the first whistle ended, she already had her arm through the chest of the guard who was blocking her way. The armor of the church was flimsy, like a piece of paper, before her.”

Chapter 128: The Pill Test

quot;She picked up the sword of the Judgement Soldiers, stabbed Faria and split a Judgement Soldier into two pieces. The blade was broken into several pieces. However, the whistle had alerted the entire cloister, there were a lot of people rushing to the scene with oil lamps. She put on Faria’s clothes and picked up the weapon of the other Judgement Soldier and walked towards the guards all by herself.”

“I sat in a room full of bleeding bodies and I came back to myself after staring blankly for a while. One of the deadmen was in charge of the keys of every entrance of the cloister, I pulled the keys out from the clothes that were scattered on a side and took the God’s Stone of Retaliation off their bodies at the same time. Although I didn’t know what the use of the stone back was then, I simply thought that with its translucent appearance, it could be sold for a good price. The priest, the guards and the Judgement Army of the cloisters were searching for her. I almost got to the hidden side door of the backyard without any hindrance. Fortunately, having tried almost every key, I opened the door and left the cloister.”

After that, I only managed to sell one of the stones and the rest were robbed. I wandered around and finally stopped at Seawindshire having depended on only the 10 silver royals that I had. I was awakened as a witch in the winter after two years.” Wendy paused. “This is my entire story.”

Nightingale held Wendy’s hands and kept quiet for a while before she said. “What about the girl from the ritual class?”

“She may have escaped or be she might be dead. After that, I heard that the church claimed that there was a fire in the cloister and it was closed down. No one cares exactly where all the girls went. They were all abandoned.”

Nightingale sighed and took Wendy into her arms. “Now you have us. Go to sleep, Wendy.”

After a long while, Wendy answered, “Uh…”

Roland yawned while walking into the office the next day. He found Nightingale gravely sitting beside the table and waiting for him.

“Huh, what happened?”

“Have you ever heard about the Extraordinary?” she asked in a deep voice.

After Roland shook his head, Nightingale repeated the story that Wendy told her the night before. She said, “It’s hard to imagine that a teenage girl could easily behead a member of the fully armed Judgement Army if she was not awakened.”

“A witch who can’t be controlled by the God’s Stone of Retaliation…” Roland contemplated for a moment after hearing the story and he remembered the categorization he made for the witches abilities. “Could it be that she’s a self-strengthening witch?”

“Self… What?”

Roland took a piece of paper out from the drawer and handed it to her. “I made a basic classification according to the type of magic you use. As a self-strengthening witch, she would consume magic all the time to transform herself, and her magic wouldn’t be affected by the God’s Stone of Retaliation. Although an ordinary witch’s physical quality would be improved accordingly with the magic content, it’s more prominent on the self-strengthening witch. If I understand correctly, Scroll is supposed to be the Extraordinary in the eyes of the church.”

“Scroll?” Nightingale was surprised. “But, she…”

“But she’s not good at fighting, right?” Roland said with a smile, “The classification isn’t determined by strength, nor is it absolutely correct as it’s just my personal ideas and speculation. A power self-strengthening witch can really cause a lot of trouble to the church. Without the restriction of the God’s Stone of Retaliation, she can selectively kill the Judgement Army, or single-handedly destroy the church of small towns. However the strength of one person is still limited, and the awakening of a self-strengthening witch must be less than the other two types, otherwise, the witch would have hunted down the church in return.” Although it’s easy for him to say, Roland had a faint unease, thinking of both the red and black pills.

There were only a few Extraordinary, but there should be at least a dozen of them over the past century? As long as there were two or three power self-strengthening types, it could get the church hung up. For example, the church would focus all its energy on the Hermes defense line to clean up the church facilities of the other cities without restraint. They could destroy the church, the priest, and the priestess altogether. The number of church believers would be greatly reduced after a few years.

However, other than the Extraordinary witch whom Wendy met, Roland had never heard about another incident of the witch attacking the church and even the cloister Wendy used to live in was destroyed by a huge fire, and no one knew the whereabouts of the girls from the ritual class.

“The church would absolutely not be sitting around waiting to be killed,” he thought, “Perhaps they already found the means against the Extraordinary, and the two pills could be one of it.”

“In any case, we should first test the effect of the pills.”

Thinking about it, Roland summoned for the guard standing outside of the door to pick up a prisoner and look for Carter.

The test field was arranged outside of the city wall.

But as a preventive action, Roland had arranged four groups of the First Army to surround the test field and they were armed.

Other than Roland and Nightingale on the city wall, Anna and Nana were also standing there. As long as there was no God’s Stone of Retaliation, Anna’s green fire was enough to protect his safety and Nana could provide the most effective treatment.

“Is everything okay?” Roland leaned over and asked Carter who was stretching his muscles and bones, “Don’t despise the opponent.”

“Don’t worry, Your Highness,” Carter put on his helmet and said, “Your Chief Knight doesn’t earn his name with nothing. And, as the opponent is only using a wooden sword, it’s impossible to hurt me.”

The test object was a murder and robbery prisoner who was sentenced to death, and Roland did not like the death redemption after doing good deeds. He had directly told the prisoner that the family would be awarded five gold royals as a reward if he sacrificed himself for the test. The prisoner hesitated for a moment and agreed.

Carter even suggested the opponent to be armored and armed with an iron sword to have a fair duel with him, but Roland rejected without any hesitation. If the death penalty criminal was armed with a sharp weapon, the risk would increase exponentially. If the chief knight’s head was chopped off, Nana would not be able to revive him. As for not wearing armor, it was just to test the pain tolerance of the black pill.

After the prisoner took both of the pills, the expression on his face quickly changed, blue veins appeared on his forehead and his arms, his skin appeared to be dark red and he was breathing hastily. He grabbed the wooden sword and dashed towards the chief knight who was quietly waiting, at the speed comparable to a running wolf. Everywhere he stepped he left a small hole, and the soil beneath his feet was trodden out into a few small pits.

Carter looked a little surprised, but still calmly took a step to the side and sliced with his sword. This trick could force the opponent to change direction, or the blade would cut into his ribs.

The opponent was just a murderer who never went through any combat training except for his strength. It was not a surprise that he was fluttered into the air with the side of his chest deeply cut open with blood gushing out. The injury was enough to affect half of his body, but he looked unconcerned and pounced towards the chief knight. Carter used the same trick, but with a slight change this time, when they passed by each other, the prisoner single-handedly pointed the wooden sword towards the knight. Generally, the awkward posture should not be threatening, but the chief knight saw a shadow when the wooden sword was swept out, and he subconsciously blocked with his sword. The strong impact forced him to take two steps backwards, while the wooden sword was also broken.

“You’re pretty strong,” Carter swang his arm and said, “Give him another sword, come again.”

The prisoner did not catch the wooden sword that was thrown to him, but suddenly turned around and ran towards the forest. His speed was increased to a level where it was hard to be matched by an ordinary human, as fast as a galloping horse. He crossed his hands in front of his body and directly bumped into the soldier who was getting ready to fire. The soldier screamed miserably and was thrown into the air. At this time, other soldiers pulled the triggers. His blood was gushing out of his body, however, it did not slow him down. He was running so quickly out of the circle that it was more than 10 meters away within a few breaths.

“Don’t let him escape,” Carter shouted, “Get me my horse!”

Before Carter getting on the horse, the prisoner was suddenly startled and looked at his stomach incredulously—there was a horizontal wide-opened wound across his stomach and his boiling hot intestines were rolling out.

He slowly turned around and saw that a lady dressed in white, holding a shining silverlight dagger had appeared behind him without him realizing.

Chapter 129: The Course Reopening

he wounded soldiers were quickly healed by Nana, and her ability to rejoin fractures was put to good use. Roland sent the First Army back to the camp, and the only ones that remained at the scene were the chief knight, the witches, and several guards.

He walked to the corpse with a gloomy face and commanded Carter to cut the back of the corpse open on where it was hit by the bullet.

The hole was about a finger and a half deep, where the bullet was found broken and the level of injury was basically the same as a normal human.

“What’s your opinion on that?” Roland asked Carter.

Carter also seemed a little upset, for he probably did not expect to have someone who never received a sword training to use such a move. “It was simply empty strength and speed, if it was not for our observation, I would have cut his head off on my first attack.”

“What if he were a knight?”

“This…” Carter contemplated. “If he were a knight under the duke, I probably could still barely cope with it, but if it was the Frostwind Knight and the Steelheart Knight from the king’s city’s knightage, I probably couldn’t measure up.”

Roland declined to comment as they would be relying on sword techniques and skills, and perhaps what Carter said was true, but with the armors, the situation would be worse. Assuming the prisoner was wearing heavy armor, with a helmet and a two-handed sword, Carter absolutely could not win so easily.

The power enhancement was multifaceted. They could carry more heavy armor and weapons, and enhance the speed as well as being able to last longer in combat. Roland thought that he had to correct the idea he had before in Longsong Stronghold. “Adrenaline? No, this is much worse than adrenaline, for hormones could only stimulate the potential of the human body. However, the red pill apparently had made the prisoner break through his limitation. He was almost comparable to the heavily-armed cavalry, especially the speed and momentum he showed when he was running.”

The effect of the black pill was equally amazing. He was almost cut in half across his ribs, and even after being shot at close range, they could not stop him. If it were the ordinary people, he should have lost combat effectiveness due to the pain.

A civilian who had no fear of pain had become so powerful. What if it were a group of well-trained soldiers? Thinking of the words of the high priest, Roland could not help but frown.

“Your Highness,” Nightingale said, “Look at his skin.”

After the initial red color on the skin of prisoner’s hand faded, it became pale and crumpled, like a molting snake. Roland poked it with a knife handle and noticed that there was no solid muscle under the skin and it felt empty. After cutting it open, he noticed that the subcutaneous fat had turned into mucus and the muscles had also shrunk.

“The effect is the same as after swallowing the God’s Stone of Retaliation,” she looked at Prince Roland and said, “The pills indeed contain the ingredients of the stone.

“Simply swallowing the stone would not produce the effect of power enhancement,” Roland said while thinking, “How did they come out with such unscientific stuff?”

The pills seemed to have a strong side effect, and it was not clear whether it was permanent or it could be restored. Roland thought it was more inclined to the former. If it were the latter, the drug similar to an enhancer of mixed morphine and adrenaline would completely be considered as the magical war potion, as long as it was distributed according to the recovery time, it would not be a surprise for the church to use it to dominate the world.

Even if it were for a short duration and there were side effects, but it was also enough for Roland to be vigilant, Roland thought. If the church turned to support Timothy or Garcia, he would have to face an army of drug addicts.

It was even more disturbing for Roland that the church was willing to sell such thing without considering that the new king would attack them using the pill after the Graycastle reunification. Graycastle could easily recruit cannon fodders on the battlefield quickly as compared to both the old and new Holy City. If they joined forces, the Judgement Army would only be slowly exhausted.

Unless… they had a stronger card in hand and did not care about anything like this.

Roland sighed, he had intended to attack Longsong Stronghold to solve the problem of population and the lack of funding before focusing on the education, production, and agriculture in order to extend Border Town into a city within a short period. He thought he would be able to put aside weapons research for the time being. However, now it seemed that the army construction could not be set aside, the First Army would have to continue to expand and the production of flintlock guns would have to be continued as well. The new weapons research would also have to be listed on the agenda as soon as possible. They needed to work on breechloaders and fixed charge cartridges.

The mechanical principle of the breechloaders was not difficult, for it could be installed with paper-made bullets and it could also be made with several copper stampings.

Roland still had no clue regarding the ignition cartridge that was used to set the bullet. He only knew that it was called mercury fulminate. It literally meant that the raw materials must consist of nitric acid and mercury. He could not recall whether it needed to mix with anything else at the moment. And, he had the impression that there were certain requirements of humidity and temperature during the production, and the risk seemed to be rather high that it would be easy to blow fingers off accidentally. After some contemplation, he decided to spend more money to recruit a group of alchemists and build a laboratory in a corner of the town so that they could ponder it over themselves.

After dinner, Roland summoned both Anna and Scroll into the office.

Now the financials of Border Town had improved, and he would soon put half of the assets into compulsory education.

Industrial society needed workers with basic cultural quality, rather than the empty brute force of the illiterate. If universal education was not in place, the demographic dividend would only become a burden for the population.

With such a view, he intended to spend some time out at the school teaching, every night from this night onwards. Until Scroll mastered the basic knowledge of “Theoretical Foundations of Natural Science”, the town should have almost completed the first batch of literacy tasks.

Scroll would be the future education pioneer and all-around teacher, so Roland wanted to pass all his knowledge to her. And, he asked Anna to come along as a favor.

Anna did not have an extra retentive memory, but her desire for knowledge and active learning was the most intense among the witches. He could often find her rummaging for books in the bookcases, and she had probably seen all the books for the past six months. In addition, her acceptance of new things and logical way of thinking was also rare in this era.

After getting the elementary mathematics and physics textbooks that Scroll created with her magic, he began to talk about today’s teaching content.

Anna’s understanding ability was significantly better than Scroll’s from the beginning of the adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing to the more complex equations. When it came to physics, Scroll was still memorizing Roland’s words and slowly assessing it while Anna could already ask a few questions from time to time.

Such as what the basic particles looked like and why the basic particles formed into various shapes and so on.

There were some questions that Roland could answer, but some of them he could not answer either.

Such as what magic power really was.

He could only share what he previously thought, saying that the magic power might be a kind of energy, similar to the electricity and heat, however, only the witches could use it currently. Ordinary people did not have the capability to store and use the magic power.

Anna revealed a thoughtful look.

The time always flew by quickly when teaching the women, especially the outstanding women. The candle had been changed twice without Roland knowing and the new one was already at its end.

Suddenly, Roland heard a soft snoring noise. Nightingale who was lying on the sofa had fallen asleep unknowingly. Perhaps the course was like a lullaby for her. The Mist had lifted the coverage, her totally inelegant sleeping position exposed to the eyes of three of them.

Roland shook his head helplessly and decided to end today’s class here. He took off his coat and gently covered her, blew out the candle and closed the door behind him, while Anna and Scroll were trying to hold back from laughing.

Chapter 130: An Evolved Ability

fter returning to her room, Anna threw a cluster of green flames into a wooden barrel filled with water. The water would be soon heated up.

She took off her clothes and stepped into the wooden barrel.

When witches wanted to clean their bodies, they came to Anna to help boil the water. After all, it was troublesome to fetch water from the kitchen. Roland was surprised when he found out. It seemed like it was difficult for him to accept the repeated usage of bath water.

When Anna thought of this, she found it funny. For a commoner, it was difficult enough to clean his body once a month. Thus, it was very common to use bath water several times.

He was not even aware of the great improvements in the witches’ living conditions after he took them in. Anna shook her head. His Highness Roland Wimbledon seemed to be erudite, but in some places, he was… slow-witted. She had read many stories where the princes would participate in various banquets and parties since his childhood. They would be familiar with all kinds of women. A prince could be ignorant and cowardly, but he should at least be good at socializing.

However, this feeling made her feel inexplicably secure.

His Highness’ head was filled with much knowledge that took her breath away, such as the steam-operated iron machine and floating stones on the water by calculation. And today’s lesson—the world is made up of little balls, so tiny that they need to be magnified thousands of times so the naked eye can see them. Because of this, they are everywhere. Either for solid, gas, and liquid or for people, flowers, and stones, when broken down, at their core, they are all basically the same material.

Anna found all these unbelievable. But how did her Highness knew all these?

After wiping herself, she dried the dripping water on her body with fire. She put on her clothes and sat at her desk.

In the center of the desk was a textbook written by Roland.

There was a period of time before the Book of Illusion was finished, so Anna borrowed this textbook. She wanted to read it for a bit before going to bed.

The book began with the common phenomena in life, before unfolding gradually like a peeled onion. Some pages were even illustrated with vivid and interesting drawings. Anna was so immersed in absorbing all the novel knowledge that she found it hard to stop after turning to the first page.

While the pages in the first part were relatively simple, the latter became more and more difficult to understand. Take the chapter on temperature, for example. It said that the cold and the heat are the active reactions of those tiny balls. The more energy those tiny balls get, the more actively they move. From a macro perspective, the temperature would rise. If what His Highness said was true, would her green flames become many active tiny balls after being magnified?

The candle burned to its end as time went on. After the flames wavered twice, it went out. Just then, the Book of Illusion was completed. The pages and handwriting became gradually transparent before disappearing altogether. Darkness engulfed the room until a green flame blossomed from Anna’s fingertips, lighting up the whole room.

Looking at the empty desk, she felt somewhat disappointed.

Holding up her right hand, the dark blue magic was like a cluster of fluorescent lights, motionless on her fingertips.

She wanted to give it a test. If everything was made up of tiny balls, could it be as tiny as a tiny ball? Anna closed her eyes and visualized the image of countless particles that made it up.

The flames started to change.

It changed from a droplet-like shape to a thin line. It became thinner and longer, before finally resembling a hair.

Anna noticed the change, but it was not enough for her. She thought the hair was still much bigger than a tiny ball. It could become much thinner.

Even though she thought so, it seemed difficult to transform the green flames again. The light became dim and the thin green light started to tremble.

Perhaps they could not be stacked, but can be linked… Her Highness had once said that there was a fixed chain between the tiny balls. Maybe she could reshape them.

The particles imagined in Anna’s mind shook twice, and with a bang, the links were broken up. The fire particles were no longer connected to each other, but flew apart like stars in the sky. The green flames may have disappeared, but in her mind, they still existed in a different shape. In the vast darkness, after most of the stars fell, the rest of the particles reunited slowly. They lined up one by one, eventually forming a filament composed of stars.

Temperature was an active matter, she thought.

As soon as she got this thought, the filament began swinging, as if someone was holding a corner of it and shaking it. After the shaking, the undulation of the filament seemed unstoppable and ripples were unfolded along it.

There seemed to be ripples in her world, where there was no clear outline between things jumping along this ripple, so was her magic power. She even thought that the first ripple plucked by her fingers was magic power itself.

When she opened her eyes, everything was quiet again. The green flames were gone. When her eyes were adjusted to the dark, the desk, the wardrobe, the candlestick… the furniture of her room showed their shapes from their shadows one by one. The pale blue moonlight poured onto the floor through the window, mirroring a small part of the grayish white. Everything appeared to be the same as usual.

But in her eyes, the world had become completely different. A dark filament floated in the air—Anna knew that she did not really see it with her eyes, but rather a different kind of perception.

She pulled out an iron ingot from under her desk and placed it in front of her.

The black filament abided by her will and wrapped itself around the iron ingot, quickly gathering. Like a hot knife cutting butter, the filament easily embedded into the iron ingot. Under the will of Anna, the temperature produced by the filament was several times higher than the green flames, but was limited to a very narrow range. Iron ingot soon broke into two. She picked up one half of it and saw the smooth cut. She could even feel its remaining warmth.

Then she placed the iron ingot vertically, placing the black filament on the top of it. She then split a horizontal filament, making them perpendicular.

This was a mathematical knowledge taught by His Highness in his lectures. With one point as the center, a precise circle could be drawn up using a tight line around the center. The area of the circle was equal to the line’s length multiplied by itself and a constant.

Anna controlled one end of the horizontal filament to bend down and form a right angle, traversing through the iron ingot to the desk. She then made it gently rotate around the center line. The shape and whole temperature of the black flames could now be adjusted, and those black flames composed of particles could be turned into any shape. The temperature of various parts could also be controlled respectively.

After making a circle, a standardized cylinder was cut and shaped.

Due to the fact that the joints were shaped too closely to each other, Anna spent a lot of efforts to beat it out of the iron. Just as the section before, the surface of the iron cylinder was quite smooth. Against the moonlight, she could even faintly see her elongated face reflected on it.

Chapter 131: The Forms of Magic Power

t the crack of dawn, Roland was pulled out of bed by Nightingale. He remembered the last time this happened was when Tigui Pine discovered Nana was a witch.

“What’s going on? Did we discover a new witch in town?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

“No, Your Highness!” Nightingale exclaimed excitedly. “Anna, Anna’s ability evolved again!”

“Again?” Roland was not completely awake. “Didn’t she already reach adulthood?”

“It’s a post-adulthood evolution. I’ve never seen such amazing magic power. It acts just like an entity.” Nightingale brought him a washbasin and continued, “Scroll and Wendy have never heard of it as well. Hurry up and take a look. Everyone’s in the office waiting for you!”

Roland gave his face a cursory wash. After putting on his clothes, he went straight to the office on the second floor with Nightingale. When he went in, the eyes of 11 witches were focused on him. Anna’s eyes were swollen, as if she had not slept well the whole night.

“Who can tell me what happened?”

The first to speak was still Nightingale. “When I passed by Anna’s room this morning, I saw her sleeping at her desk with a pile of iron lumps. I wanted to wake her up, but when I got closer, I noticed her magic power had turned…” She paused momentarily, as if to think of a way to describe it. “Her magic power has become a fixed shape, like a revolving block.”

“A block?” Roland approached Anna and carefully observed her. There was nothing unusual about her, except for her exhaustion. Then he noticed a cylinder on the desk. The cylinder seemed to be made out of pig iron. Its smooth gray surface and the flatness of its top was an unbelievable sight for him. “This is…”

“Anna made that,” Nightingale said, “Using her new magic power. After a witch is awakened, her body will gather magic power. At first it’ll as pale as the fog, but in a few years, it’ll slowly become a whirlpool of gas of a different color. For example, Wendy’s color is white and Leaf’s color is green… As for Anna, her magic power was immense in the past. In adulthood, it became a lot more condensed, making it a dark green. But her magic power is now only the size of a fist. It’s like a solid object, completely opaque.” She picked up a quill pen on the desk to roughly depict it. “That’s basically what it looks like now.”

Nightingale’s drawing was terrible, but Roland could still tell that it was a cube.

He looked at Anna. “What happened last night?”

Anna told him what she experienced. When she finished talking, the other witches were still confused. They did not understand what the tiny balls, vibration, and linking had to do with the evolution of her ability.

Roland was the only one who was a little shocked.

In his view, magic power was a form of energy and it was the witch who released it. Magic power could be transformed infinitely, but its form was ultimately dependent on the witch manipulating it. In other words, it depended on the witch’s thoughts.

If his guess was accurate, a witch’s thoughts could have far-reaching impacts on her magic power.

To put it simply, a man who had never seen a plane would find it hard to imagine a huge iron bird flying in the air. A man who had never seen the universe would naturally not know how wide the world was. It was one’s knowledge and thoughts that limited the use of magic power. Every step in understanding the nature of the world would bring great progress in science and technology. Would that hold true for a witch’s ability? The more they understood the world, the closer their magic power got to its origin?

“Let me see your new ability,” Roland said curiously.

Anna stuck out her fingers. A mass of black flames appeared on her fingertips, looking nothing different from ordinary flames, except for the fact that they did not glow.

“Can your Blackfire change shapes freely?”

Anna nodded and controlled the Blackfire to the table. Soon, the Blackfire suddenly turned into a cube. Not yet all the people noticed what happened, the cube spread into a black cloth, almost covered the entire desktop, and then concentrated to the center gradually, it turned into a straight line. Roland could not help touching it and found that hair shaped slim black line did not move— that was so incredible, we all knew that even if it was hard as steel, when it was pulled into a filament, one could easily twist it with fingers. This was determined by the flexibility of the object, the absolutely solid material did not exist.

“Can you make it finer?”

“Yes, but you can’t touch it anymore,” said Anna, “Otherwise it’ll cut you.”

“What about the temperature? Can you control it freely as well?”

“Yes. Compared with the green fire, I can make it produce different temperatures at different parts.”

Roland basically understood what Nightingale mean by the ability liked real substance, compared with the green fire which as gentle as water, her ability had been cohered at the moment, and it was not appropriate to describe her ability as flame—when Anna accepted the point of view that the world was made by the microparticle, her knowledge of the temperature generated by flame broke the horizon of the temperature generated by particle movements. What could be sure was the two sides did not control the particles, like they did not control the flame… Whether the originally ordinary flame, or the green and black flame after adult year, they were all the forms of magic power.

Even though both were heat transformed from magic power, the effects were totally different.

Roland could not help thinking that Anna was a true genius. Other than that, he had nothing more appropriate to describe her. After learning the theory just a few days ago, she immediately understood and even applied it to her magic power. Such thought and capacity for knowledge could only be found in talented people.

Anna’s transformation also made him more interested in exploring the true meaning of the world.

It was a pity that Roland could never possess magic power. This might be the biggest regret for him after the time traveled. After all, most people had a superhero dream. If one developed incredible strength out of the blue, thus changing his whole life, how wonderful would that be?

“I think I’ve figured out the reason for the change in Anna’s ability,” he told the witches, leaving behind his regret in his heart.

“What’s that?” the witches asked.

“Learning.”

“Learning?” Scroll muttered, “Do you mean the class yesterday?”

“Exactly,” Roland briefly explained what he guessed, “The knowledge will help you improve your ability and even dramatically transform it.”

“Can I… do that too?” Mystery Moon asked timidly.

“Of course.” Roland patted her shoulder. If not for the fact that steam engines were limited in number, and they could not find rubber, they could have made wires. The pile of strong magnets made with her enchantment would definitely come in handy.

Roland’s original purpose in lecturing was to pass on knowledge to Scroll, in case he forgot more as time passed. Now that he accidentally discovered that such knowledge could also improve the witches’ abilities, his class had become a necessity for all witches.

Of course, he understood not everyone had an outstanding talent like Anna. For Nightingale who would fall asleep in class, he naturally did not pin any hopes on her. From remembering to understanding, and from understanding to applying, there were many gaps in the process. He did not know how many of them could truly understand the knowledge and finally apply it to their magic power.

“Did you not sleep well last night?” Roland asked Anna. “Take a good rest first. I’ll test your new ability a few days later.”

“Yes.” Anna nodded seriously.

“As for you all,” he said, looking to the other witches, “from today onwards, gather in the living room after dinner from Monday to Friday to learn basic reading and writing. Scroll, you’re their teacher that’ll lead them towards enlightenment.”

Chapter 132: The Knight of the Elk Family (Part I)

rius had been kept here for five days.

After the transformation, the residence was almost like a cell. The original wooden doors had been replaced with wood balustrades and the furniture had all been removed. Only a few blankets remained. The only advantage was that the room was still clean, and neither air nor rain could leak in.

Aside from him, there were four other people in the cell. One belonged to the Wolf Family, while the other three were from the Ryan Family. And he, himself was the knight of the Earl of the Elk Family.

“Oh, heck! When can we leave?” The oldest knight of the Ryan Family shouted, “The wheat in my domain has not been sown yet! My wife doesn’t know how to deal with these things.”

“Your domain?” The young knight of the Wolf Family sneered at him. “Do you think His Highness will let you go to gather horses, weapons, and armor? Do you think he’ll give you a chance for revenge? To tell you the truth, you should consider him merciful for not hanging you already”

“What did you say?!” The older knight glared at him.

“It’s the truth,” said the young knight in a carefree voice. “The duke was the mastermind behind the rebellion. Why did he not dispose of his elite knightage, to leave them for his son? As for us, we had no choice but to go to the battlefield under the threats of the duke.

“I think you’re suicidal!” He walked over and lifted the young man, with his right hand clenched. As he was about to beat him, a hand stretched out from behind and held him firmly.

“Stop! Halon. Do you want to attract the guards?” An extremely handsome knight pushed down his fist. “He’s right. We’re the knights of the duke. When convicted, the sentence will be severe. Right now, the only thing we can do is to wait for the result. Look at the knight of the Elk Family and look at you. Where’s your demeanor as a noble?”

Prius knew him. He was Ferlin Eltek, the star knight of Longsong Stronghold. His nickname was Morning Light. He had attracted many young ladies of the noble. But in the end, h had married a civilian woman, which had caused a big clamor at the time. Hearing Ferlin Eltek mentioning him, Prius could not remain silent anymore. He said to the three people who were quarreling, “I’m not sure whether your domain will be returned. But at least I know His Highness won’t kill you.”

“Oh? Why?”

“Killing you at the stronghold would have been more effective, why would he kill you here after all the trouble he went through to bring you here? For his subjects?” Prius shook his head. “The knightage wasn’t even able to enter Border Town. ”

They had not burned, killed or looted the town, so the townspeople would not hold extreme hatred against them. Therefore, for the prince, killing them in the town would not be as good as killing in the stronghold. Since they had not been killed in the stronghold, they should be alright.

Ferlin thought a little and nodded. “What you say is reasonable. And what’s your name…”

“Prius Dessau.”

“Thank you for your comfort, Sir Dessau.” Ferlin looked at him with gratitude and took Halon back to the corner.

Ferlin Eltek sat down and hummed against the wall.

Prius thought that Ferlin Eltek was not really afraid, but his own “calmness” was just a facade.

Prius knew that he was unsuited to be a knight. He had not inherited his father’s bravery or the wisdom of his mother. Compared with swords, he performed by taking care of his fields. For example, keeping chickens and ducks, going fishing in the pond. He had been forced to fight for the Earl of the Elk Family. He did not even like to hunt, and he never mind killing people. When in an assault, Prius always rode behind other people. He was still surprised to be alive.

“Wait…” Suddenly, he felt a bit strange. “As the star knight, why has Ferlin Eltek survived as well? Shouldn’t he be the first one to go?”

“His Highness wants to see you,” the guards shouted at the door, “Sirius Daly! Come out first.”

The young knight jumped up, waved to the others, and walked out of the cell.

“Hey, what about us!”

Halon ran to the door but was forced back by a short jab from the guard. After locking the door, the guard said, “Don’t worry, it’ll be your turn later.”

Knowing that the trial was about to come, Prius was getting more nervous. Damn it! He had been waiting for this day, but now that it was here, he was frightened. He got angry. His body could not stop trembling. He looked at the door from time to time. It was like waiting for his first child’s birth, with hope and panic coexisting.

Fortunately, the wait was not long. About 30 minutes later, the guard came back. “Prius Dessau, it’s your turn.”

He stood up in a panic and tripped over the blanket on the ground. Luckily, Ferlin was quick to help him up.

“Thank you.” His throat was dry.

“It’s no bother,” Ferlin replied gently, which made Prius feel quite relieved.

He nodded to Ferlin and followed the guard out of the cell.

The guard was a young boy, about 17 years old, wearing dark brown leather and boots, he carried thorns and sticks in his hand.

“Aren’t you going to tie my hands?” asked Prius.

“You were searched before being locked in, what can you do without weapons?”

“Where are you going to take me?”

“The castle of His Highness.”

“What happened to the man before me? The knight called Sirius. What about him?”

The guard shrugged and did not answer.

Well, maybe he did not know, maybe he did not want to tell. Prius stopped asking.

He felt strange about this guard. He looked like an ordinary civilian from his dress and appearance, but he was not afraid of the knights and when talking he did not even use the most basic honorifics. It seemed that he was not aware that these people could easily determine his life and death in normal times.

Something was strange about the guard’s eyes. Prius had seen many civilians who had been running around for life, who were stiff and indifferent, just as a corpse without soul. But in this man’s eyes, he saw the pride. He was obviously a civilian, but he had the same proud manner as the knights’. Prius was very confused.

What kind of environment could create such a person?

He looked around. Though he had not been to Border Town before, he had still heard of this barren and desolate place. But the town in front of him was thriving, far different from what he had imagined. The streets were crowded with busy people bustling about quickly. From time to time someone would say hello to the guard. Everyone’s faces were ruddy and full of energy as if there had been no suffering during the Months of Demons.

Close to the castle, he saw an open space with more than a hundred people. It seemed that they were building houses, but looking at the size, it looked like more than one. The materials piled nearby were clay bricks. In general, only the nobles could choose this expensive material, but then again, these houses were too small for the nobles. Some of the houses already built in the open space were just a little bigger than his own living room. In addition, the rooms were too similar, as if they were printed out. What kind of noble would like this kind of room?

With his mind full of questions, Prius entered the castle.

Chapter 133: The Knight of the Elk Family (Part II)

efore entering the room, Prius was searched again. This time the search was much more detailed. From top to bottom, any place that could hide a knife or dagger was checked again, even his soles were searched.

Then he saw the men who defeated the Duke the Coalition—Roland Wimbledon, the Fourth Prince of Graycastle, the lord of the Border Town, and the new lord of the Western Region.

The prince had long gray hair, a symbol of his royal blood. His face looked very young, at most 20 years old. His hair was not bounded, and he did wear any crown. The fingers holding the quill pen were slender, and you could not see any jewelry or rings on his hand, not even a bracelet. This was very rare for the noble.

“Prius Dessau, Knight of the Earl of the Elk Family?” Roland leaned against the chair and looked over his list.

“Yes, Your Highness.” Prius knelt down on one knee.

He still could not believe that this man, who had no beard on his face, could lead a group of miners and hunters to defeat Duke Ryan.

“Are you literate? Can you read or write? Please stand up and answer my questions.”

“I am, Your Highness. This is the most basic requirement of a knight.” Swinging up, Prius stood wobbling. He suddenly remembered that being adept with both the pen and the sword did not apply to some of older knights that had been conferred in the Kingdom of Graycastle, so he added, “I mean, the new knights.”

Over the past three decades, battle accomplishments and battle skills had had a reduced role in the appointment of new knights, as many other considerations had been added. If you could not read or write, it was difficult to be chosen by the lord. The rise of Frostwind Knight in the king’s city, and Morning Light in the Western Region had also taken the requirements to a new level.

So if one desired to become a trainee knight, the first thing to learn would be reading. To reach a higher level, he also had to be proficient in all kinds of etiquette.

But Prius did not understand why His Highness asked this question.

“Well,” said the prince, “Then I’ll make the verdict now.”

This made him hold his breath instantly.

“You have two choices. One is to become a miner in the North Slope Mine for two decades to redeem your sins. The other one is to become a teacher, teaching my people to read and write. Miners aren’t slaves, rather you would be getting a salary, and you could have three days off per month. If you were to be a teacher, in addition to salary, there would also be free housing for you, and you could have two days off per week. However, if you choose the latter option, you must work until the age of 50. At that time, even if you quit the position, you’ll continue to receive your salary.”

Hearing this, Prius felt relieved. It was like he had expected before, no execution or exile. But these two choices puzzled him, mining sounded like hard work, but His Highness had said there were salaries and holiday? To be a teacher, that was supposed to be the job of knowledgeable people, wasn’t it? He could only write and read. And His Highness had said that he should teach his people, what did he mean? Did he mean to cultivate the civilians like noble?

The important thing was that in that both choices there had been no remark of how his territory would be handled.

Prius looked up at the prince, and asked carefully, “Your Highness, I don’t know, if I choose one of the two, how my territory will be…”

“From the moment you lifted the sword to me, your territory was no longer yours,” Roland said bluntly, “and I’ve reached an agreement with the successor of the Elk Family. Your estate will be converted to gold royals as compensation to you, and when you make your choice, the new earl will send the compensation together with your family to Border Town so that he can vacate the place to recruit knights.”

Prius was worried, for there were only a house and a flock of chickens and ducks in his territory. How much could these things be worth? The new earl would certainly take a big discount. It was hard to say if there were 30 gold royals or not. The earl had just died, and his successor would abandon him. Prius was disappointed.

“As an accomplice to the rebels, this is a minor verdict,” said Roland. “Why regret a bare territory? Whether you choose to be a miner or a teacher, you would have enough money to buy land in Border Town.”

Hearing this, Prius resumed a little again. He did not want to be a miner, as for the other choice… “Your Highness, how much is a teacher’s salary?”

“Junior teachers receive 20 silver royals per month, with an increase of five each year until the age of 50. After the age of 50, the salary will be calculated on the basis of the maximum growth. Incidentally, the right can’t be inherited or transferred.”

Prius calculated that with nearly three gold royals every year, in addition to the increase every year, in about four or five years, he would have the revenue of his territory’s. “Your Highness, what does junior teacher mean? Are there other categories?”

“Of course. The junior teachers only teach reading and writing, while secondary and senior teachers have to teach all subjects, as long as you have the ability which is beneficial to the development of Border Town, you can take the job.” Roland sat up. “Do you have any good skills? I don’t need riding and fencing.”

“I’m not good at these skills anyway,” Prius thought. He hesitated and then spoke, “Your Highness, I’m good at raising chickens and ducks, and I’m also good at fishing. Do these skills work?” The moment the words left his mouth, he regretted it. The skills he had said could not be considered skills. Chicken and ducks could be alive in the wild by themselves. And noblemen liked to raise birds and cats, but this was just their hobby. They never dedicated to raising these small animals. As for fishing, this was the same as the hunting which was just a personal hobby.

His Highness was actually interested in the first part of his sentence. “Oh, how to raise poultry? Please tell me about it.”

“Well, according to the experience I’ve gained in the territory, they’ll grow faster if fed with some corn, rather than the full stocking. And if the grain is mixed with sand, they’ll also grow fast, meanwhile, the food can be saved. You need to build a shed in a ventilated place, which can keep out rain, wind and sun. Especially in summer, if there’s no shed, the hen will probably stop laying eggs. And in winter, if you put straw inside, you can avoid the chickens freezing to death. In addition, if the chickens are fed some fish every month, then the flocks are less likely to get sick. Of course, the cleaning of chicken manure is also very important…”

His Highness started laughing. “Not bad! It seems that the noble of the Western Region isn’t completely useless.”

“Your Highness?” Prius did not understand.

Fortunately, Roland Wimbledon quickly solved his worries. “I’ll let people buy some chickens and ducks from Longsong Stronghold, and I’ll give some land west of the border to you to raise the poultry there. If you do well and teach the raising method to others, the remuneration will be the same as the secondary teachers. The salary starts with 50 silver royals per month in the first year, with an increase of ten each year. But if it fails, North Slope is your only choice.”